by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts
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Readings
John 17:13-23
“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Read the written message below
The oneness of humanity is a theme hinted at or exclaimed by many traditions and ancient scriptures, and I think leaning into this awareness can serve as a healing salve for our minds and our world. However, why do so many traditions use different terms or explanations for how we are one, or ignore this often-scriptural concept entirely? What’s the fundamental similarity and is it similar enough to be called the same thing? And finally, is there something fundamental at the core of our beings that unites us even in, especially in, our diversity?
The somewhat surprising core of finding oneness in most traditions is finding the inner diverse light of truth. But I think in many religious or spiritual circles we tend to define “truth” as “being part of this religion,” instead of emphasizing the more fundamental idea of sincerely knowing your core being of compassionate awareness and getting to know your universe while realizing we’re all one in Spirit (even if we don’t call it that). This involves letting go of bigotry and enforced groupthink, philosophical or otherwise, and seeking the fundamental nature of all our diverse lives.
What God(dess) and many established spiritual sages seem to emphasize in scriptures and in records that many practicing traditions tend to ignore about our oneness in awareness, is the vast healing power it has when we lean into it mentally. This tends to involve loosening our attachments and aversions to things and ideas of this world and turning toward our core of open, skylike awareness and compassion. It is less a process of finding unity or enforcing a dogma of unity than it is an opening of our ability to realize our always present oneness in the light of consciousness. Further, in the openness of God’s light of awareness, we can see the diverse beauty in all peoples sourced from and seen in our shared Divine light and help empower it in health.
In my studies of psychotherapy, one tool seems to relate to this turning towards the spirit of awareness within (often called the light of God) and that’s the tool of watching ourselves. Although sometimes conveyed in different ways, a helpful practice uplifted by current-day counselors is taking a step back from our thoughts and just watching them (while also not looking for them). As we do this in a state of non-judgment, we can start to discover the truth of ourselves and become more identified with being the watcher than caught up in every inner change. Without analyzing the mind states that come, we may discover aspects of our mind’s motivations and where they come from. When is it defensive, ambitious, yearning, anxious, fearful, and why? When are we in a peaceful flow with little to no active inner word-streams? We may start to find that we are racked by the changes of our mind quite often, but as we learn about ourselves and identify less with our thoughts and more with the shared light of awareness, we can set our selfish, divided, and divisive thinking aside for the hurtful delusions that they are.
We see Christ in the Bible use similar tools in his ministry on earth to help “awaken” those around him to the open love, truth, and compassion of God. He often asks questions that shed light on a person’s perspective of themselves and of Spirit, and then shares truths about our oneness in God’s compassionate and infinite caring light that the person can use to break free from their turmoil and subjugation. Of course, these lessons are meant for us as well – pointing us to our unity in the diversity of Divine life, in open awareness, sourced in a God of merciful love and wisdom that transcends any specific tradition.
When we forget or ignore these practical lessons of how we find God within (the God that transcends any one name and for some people, even the word “God”) we often become more externally obsessed with getting the label of which God we worship right or which creed or perspective we adhere to right. In this state, we sometimes sneer at those not in our religion, or, depending on the perspective, at all the religious, all the non-religious, all the God-fearing, all the non-God-fearing, all the polytheists, and so on – missing the possibilities for deeply unifying common ground and often misunderstanding others’ perspectives in their perceived strangeness.
One of our favorite mystics and the unintentional namesake for this ministry’s tradition, Emanuel Swedenborg, believed that all the passed people that now make heaven’s angels continue in their unfathomably wide diversity of healthy cultures and spiritualities sourced from the infinity of God’s goodness and life – albeit, with many of our false and hurtful motivations now left at the wayside. What’s funny is that Swedenborg often points out in his books that a false understanding can for a time be permitted by the light of heaven if it’s used to support a greater truth – for example, a belief in something scientifically unsound that the person uses to help empower their belief in the importance of compassion or of a Divinity within everyone.
Moreover, he emphasizes how the angelic state that we can obtain within and in the next life centres on our understanding and adoption of the truth that we are all unified and all can centre on God’s warmth and light in our own way, because God sheds spiritual light that covers all spectrums of goodness and spiritual health. The more diversity in heaven actually increases its similarity with God (since everything in heaven is from God) and makes it more brilliantly perfect and whole!
He also writes that we all receive life, the light of wisdom and the warmth of love, from the Transcendent – which is one with us, at the core of our being. We can miss the practical implications of this, and yet, I think its practicality is why Swedenborg shared these details! We become more angelic, more at peace, in harmony, and in connection in our diversity the more we realize and live the truth of our unity in the compassionate awareness of Spirit that we each have at our core. This seems to involve becoming more identified with this shared oneness than with our obsessed focus on our perceived histories, distortions, distractions, failings, successes, yearnings, and aversions.
What’s nice is that awareness is our intrinsic state: there’s no true escaping the source of peace and compassion within that’s shared by everyone and perhaps everything, although we don’t often identify with or meditate on it. Indeed, our own awareness is the only thing we know for sure – through dreams, various waking states or identities, and perhaps in death as well.
The love and light of God exude from our very being even when we say there’s no evidence for it. Unfortunately, pain and hurt seem to become our centre when we miss the practical nature of this fundamental truth, known by many phrases, and identify with the transient nature of our minds and our world. Let’s do ourselves a favor by letting go of our deluded thoughts and finding more out about the truth of ourselves and our inner teacher. Let’s release the distortions that block our awareness of our shared inner light, allowing for what Christ called our “complete unity” in each other, in our diversity, in the Divine.
Peace and care to you,
Cory